The Koreans in China waiting 70 years for peace

By Kirsty Needham

Tumen, China: US President Donald Trump's nuclear talks with North Korea may have faltered in recent weeks, but in the Chinese border town of Tumen, they are getting on with building a bridge.

A fast flowing river a few metres wide separates Tumen from the North Korean village of Namyang.

A Chinese tourist puts on a traditional Korean costume to take pictures on the riverfront promenade in Tumen, China.

Photo: Sanghee Liu

Tourists come to the Chinese side of the border to pose in Korean costume and take photos against a backdrop of emerald green North Korean mountains.

For 25 yuan ($5), Chinese (but not foreigners) can walk part of the way across a disused bridge built by the Japanese in the 1940s. Next to it, construction is continuing apace - from both ends - on a new bridge over the Tumen River.

The bridge is expected to be finished by year’s end. Whether it can be a road to economic prosperity for this poor border town will depend on the swiftly changing winds of global politics.

As North Korea prepares to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its founding on Sunday, the jury is out in Tumen as to whether the nation is finally on a path to opening to the world.

A Chinese tourist looks at North Korea from the Tumen side of the border.

Photo: Sanghee Liu

The locals here are largely ethnic Koreans. Many have family in North Korea. These relatives are now distant, after three generations of separation, Tumen residents told Fairfax Media on Friday.

Just five months earlier, the prospects for a trade boom looked good as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed a declaration with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and the leaders said they wanted to sign a peace treaty to officially end the Korean War in 2018.

Work on the bridge sped up in June, after Kim made his second trip to China to study economic reform.

Tumen residents play cards in a park on the border with North Korea on Friday.

Photo: Sanghee Liu

Sitting playing chess with friends in the sunshine, one man whose grandparents fled to China has closely watched news of the South Koreans briefly reunited with family in North Korea last month. He has heard there will be a big celebration in Pyongyang on Sunday for the anniversary.

"There will be no celebrations in Tumen," says this third generation Chinese Korean.

A lady playing cards says her son has migrated to South Korea. She has lost contact with her relatives in North Korea after the older generation died. She has no connection with their children.

There will be no celebrations in Tumen," says this third generation Chinese Korean.

Tumen resident, third generation Chinese Korean

In little over a week, Moon will make the historic trip to Pyongyang for his third summit with Kim this year.

She cautiously hopes the improving relations South Korea and North Korea could lead to more widespread family reunions. “But Trump is ruining it,” she adds.

Tumen citizens play ping pong in a park.

Photo: Sanghee Liu

A group of old men playing badminton declare Tumen is the best place in the world to live, and the town's fortunes will rise if North Korea improves its relationship with China. The bridge will be important for the town, they say.

One recalls he travelled frequently between Tumen and Namyang, to sell shoes to North Koreans and return with seafood, in the decade after China's economic reforms in 1985. As travel restrictions rose as North Korea began its nuclear program, he stopped his trading.

China’s Yanbian Korean Autonomous Region in the north-east of Jilin province is home to around 1 million ethnic Koreans, who are permitted to travel to bordering North Korean towns without a passport. The regional airport at Yanji is decorated in traditional Korean style, with large tourism billboards of Korea's sacred mountain, Mount Paektu. Street signs are in Chinese and Korean.

But tough United Nations Security Council sanctions, racheted up last year in response to Kim's missile and nuclear tests, has halted any border trade. Frequent PLA and police checkpoints along roads deter smuggling.

Old and new bridge: the old bridge was built by the Japanese in 1941, while the construction of new bridge was agreed by Chinese and North Korean government in 2015.

Photo: Sanghee Liu

The Tumen industrial estate that once hummed with North Korean textile workers is silent. Policemen sit outside factories in cars, as CCTV cameras scan the estate’s empty streets.

Under the sanctions, North Korean workers were sent home in January, to cut off cash to Kim's regime.

In another border town, Hanchun, seafood factories that once serviced North Korean restarants across China said they only had Russian fish.

Despite shopfront signage that promised North Korea seafood, Hanchun's seafood markets have fat Russian crabs in their tanks. The North Korean seafood can’t get through, Fairfax Media was repeatedly told.

Except for one shop, where puny young crabs smaller than a fist were on sale. They were North Korean, via the Chinese trading town of Dandong, confirmed the shopkeeper.

The shopkeeper complained that ordinary Chinese can’t afford Russian crabs that sell for $200 a piece. “That is the cost of an entire pig!"

The local economy - food, hotels, tourism and trading - depended on North Korea being open, and had been hit hard by the sanctions, the shopkeeper said.

It was Trump's fault, for “behaving worse than a child”, that the road back to recovery had stalled, in this border town resident's eyes.